The Meaning Of KEMET
Every Nome (Town Or City) In Ancient Egypt Was Built And Named In Honor Of, Or Represented By, A God Or Goddess. Why Should The Name KEMET Be Any Different --- Especially When There's
A God Named Khem?
You’ve been told that the ‘black’ in Kem-et alludes to the fertile black silt of the Nile Valley, and not, as some have speculated, and others have wished, to the complexion of the indigenous populace of ancient North Africa. I wish to present an original hypothesis. Since Kemet is suffixed with the niwt determinative indicative of a town or city (Gardiner's O49, instead of the hieroglyph pertaining to land, N16), I propose that it cannot represent the land of Egypt, both Upper and Lower, in its entirety. Acknowledging the example bequeathed to us by the Greeks when they gave the name Egypt to its capital city of Memphis (which subsequently came to designate the country in general), I assign the name Kemet to one nome in particular, which, like Memphis, was also named after a god (three gods in fact!). But here I refer to that god who also personified the fertility of the black silt : Min. Herodotus wrote that Min “was the first human king of Egypt*”. (History of Egypt, Bk II, 1.4). I'm certainly not the first to postulate that Kemet derives its name from an eponymous ancestor, since it was certainly the intention of the primary revisionists of Egyptian history (the LXX) to insinuate to its readers that Egypt's namesake was originally Mizraim (Gen. 10:6), the aramaic name for Egypt --- a person, as opposed to a conspicuous feature of the country's landscape. And, of course, it's only logical that a land should be named after the king (or the God served by the king) who conquers a land As the evidence set forth in my hypothesis suggests, Mene is a variant spelling of Min, Men or Menu, and is therefore one of the first two theophorics born by an Egyptian king. The other being Horus.
*But not the first Pharaoh.
It was Mene who united the two lands, and Mene who built Memphis, the first nome of Lower Egypt. The second nome of Lower Egypt was called Khensu, the capital of which was called Khem, an alternate appellation for Min. The reader can appreciate the significance of Khensu’s northern proximity to Memphis when it is recalled that its nome standard is the ‘cow’s thigh’, and that the northern constellation of the ‘bull’s thigh’ was crucial to the builders (followers of Ptah) who laid temple foundations during the night. Then there’s the fact that Min was also called the ‘Protector of the Moon’, as well as being a patron god of Masons. In conclusion, the hypothesis demonstrates the plausibility that Kemet originally referred to the second nome of Lower Egypt only, then gradually came to encompass the Two Lands in their extremities.
[Note: Further proof of Min's association with lunar theology is preserved in the Greek etymology of the word moon].
